The Knights are my dark horse to win the comp and to me they have a real feel of the 09 Eels.
They were sitting in the bottom 4 nine weeks ago and their coach was days away from being sacked.
It looks to me that O'Brien took the shackles off the knights attack very similar to Daniel Anderson in 09.
Another parallel is Ponga/Hayne both being untouchable in the back half of the season.
As far as spines go our 5/8, half and hooker were just toilers like the knights but are riding on the back of Ponga like we did with Hayne.
You can even start matching like for like with Best/Lyon, Cayless/Safiti, Hindmarsh/Frizell and Grothe jr/Marzew.
I would like to see them win (even though I haven't forgiven them for 01) as I would hate to see thr Panthers, Brisbane or Storm take the title.
What do you guys think do I have a case or am I clutching at straws
Replies
Lyon?
Sorry got mixed up with 01
They definitely have a similar feel about them. I'll give you that. Although to be fair, if they want to be accurate they'll need to lose to Melbourne in the finals, and the Storm will be outed as cheating the salary cap in a year or two.
But in all seriousness there's only two teams I see winning this year. Penrith or Melbourne. Brisbane have a similar feel to that of Penrith a few years back. Played great all season but will come up short of the big teams. They're too inexperienced. Knights could be a smokey though.
KP is great, but no one ever has come close to doing what JH did in 09. Maybe Turbo in 2021. Maybe. JH brought the rest of the league to its knees for those 3 months.
The Knights are going well, and I think they'll take care of the Chooks, but I don't see them going any further. They might knock off the Warriors in Week 2, but that's it.
Turbo was able to take advantage of a bunch of ridiculous rules that skewed the game far more to attacking sides than the game had ever seen before.
Turbo also wasn't asked to take on the role of chief playmaker. He had the Australian and Queensland halfback guiding the side around.
Hayne had to do everything. He was the side's general play kicker and playmaker while also operating at fullback.
This
I did say maybe
Yep. Hayne 09 was next level. Others might argue Turbo 21 or Barba (whatever year it was), but both had mostly running highlights. Hayne was doing everything.
Knights don't play the Roosters but the Raiders don't they?
Hayne could have been an immortal if he applied himself and stuck with league.
Best I have ever seen for that period of time.
Ben Barba had a great year a couple of years later. Another wasted talent
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